There has been known that conventional washing apparatuses perform different washing works, such as immersion washing, vapor washing, and the like, in a single washing bath, as of the inventions described in Japanese Patent Publications No. Hei 3-58,789 and No. Hei 3-551,925.
In these conventional apparatuses, although any of these apparatuses perform liquid washing, vapor washing and the like while conveying articles to be cleaned, the articles are always exposed in a washing bath, so that the articles can not be moved as in a sealed condition separately from the washing bath and can not be washed as in the sealed condition.
Therefore, in the case that the articles are washed with vapor, there is no way to produce vapor in a conventional apparatus except that the entire solvent in the vapor producing bath is heated, so that it needs much more energy than energy to be required for obtaining necessary vapor, thereby resulting in being expensive.
In a conventional ordinary apparatus, it is extremely dangerous to wash the articles with a combustible solvent. Although there is an apparatus capable of washing by the combustible solvent, the apparatus is made to be complicated and large, and therefore, has a weakness in practical use.
In the case that the articles are dried after liquid-washed with a conventional apparatus, in particular, the case when the articles are vacuum-dried, the entire washing bath is sealed, and then, the apparatus does vacuum drying after washing liquid is drained out. After the completion of vacuum drying, the articles are taken out, and washing liquid is filled up into the washing bath again to perform next washing work. Therefore, pouring and draining washing liquid are turned into tedious works, causing inferior workability.
The conventional apparatus described above has a fault that the washing apparatus can not handle liquid washing work and vacuum drying work continuously in the single washing bath.
Moreover, in the case that an apparatus continuously does only the vacuum drying work, it is possible even for the conventional apparatus to apply vacuum drying to the articles already liquid-washed after introducing them in the vacuum drying chamber, where the washing apparatus is formed with a vacuum drying chamber in addition to the washing bath. However, in the case that a solvent is used for washing work, the apparatus raises a problem in which the solvent attached to the articles will diffuse while the articles are transferred to the vacuum drying chamber. In addition, another problem is that the entire mechanism becomes larger and more expensive since the apparatus for vacuum drying must be a separate apparatus.
Furthermore, in order to form a vacuum inside the whole washing bath as done in the conventional apparatus, a much larger volume than a space occupied by the articles, is required in the vacuum, resulting in extremely bad efficiency.
This invention is about to solve the problems described above and facilitates various kinds of different washing works in a single washing bath.